1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a vegetable harvester and more particularly to a harvester for harvesting podlike fruit of low bush like plants.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The fruit of many plants is harvested by hand pickers today even though there have been numerous attempts to mechanize their harvesting. The attempts to mechanize their harvest have been unsuccessful for many different reasons. As a result, large numbers of hand pickers are required to harvest some vegetable crops. Hand harvesting is hard work that many people refuse to do. Farmers are not therefore assured of having the required number of people at the right time to harvest their crops. Hand harvesting of vegetables is generally slow, making it expensive. Crops which are harvested by hand today are often too expensive to compete with similar crops that can be harvested by machines.
Attempts to mechanize the harvesting of some crops have failed as stated above. The reasons for failures include the inability of a machine to accommodate the growing conditions, failure to separate the desired fruit from the plant, unacceptable plant damage, unacceptable fruit damage, unacceptable levels of plant and foreign material mixed with the fruit and low machine capacity or reliability.
Several different individuals have attempted over the years to make a harvester that is acceptable for harvesting podlike fruits such as peppers. These efforts have had very limited success. There were no commercially acceptable pepper harvesters before the harvester disclosed below was developed.